QuietSpacing

Leave Time Between Appointments

Imagine a wake of papers drifting to the floor behind you as you charge off to your next appointment (physical meeting, video conference, phone call, etc.). That’s what’s happening to all the thoughts and ideas you had in the apppointment you just left as you race to the next one.  They’re drifting into oblivion as you try to gain purchase on the upcoming subject matter. Worse, yet, you’re still thinking about those items as you enter the next meeting, resulting in loss of attention to the topic at hand. Two birds killed with one stone - with negative results.

Try inserting just a snippet of time between appointments - five to fifteen minutes. This will allow you to capture all those trailing thoughts into a  physical or electronic form, give you an opportunity to catch up on other projects in the works, and provide space for you to take a deep breath before moving forward. The net result is lowered stress, increased productivity, and a greater sense of command over your day.

Reduce Appointment Lengths By 25%

Work fills the time allotted. Not truism is more accurate in the business day. Meetings, conference calls, videocasts and the like can seem endless, sucking down valuable time that is better spent getting things done.

Try reducing meeting lengths by 25% and see what happens.  Reduce a 60-minute appointment to 45 minutes or take a 30-minute meeting down to 25. (Okay, that last is not exactly 25%, but you get the idea). You’ll find that people tend to focus more specifically on the topic de jure and cut through the side trips. If you don’t get everything done, just schedule another, shortened meeting!  The worse case scenario is that you run a few minutes long, but, thanks to the first suggestion above, you’ve got some leeway there.

Manufacturing Time Is Easy!

The two suggestions above are quite simple to implement. Other people may need some time to adjust to the new formats - shortened meeting lengths and spaces between appointments - but you can see that they go hand-in-hand. The net result of doing both is that you’ve actually used the same amount of time more effectively and efficiently. Consequently, you’re more productive, in greater command of your day, and feel less stress.

Tweet This Post

Email has reduced us to the level of salivating dogs.  Whether we are in the office, at home, or in the line at the grocery store, we are obsessed with checking our e-mail.  Ask yourself, when was the last time you went 20 minutes without checking your e-mail or without thinking about checking your e-mail during a workday?  My guess is that you can’t recall.  I know I can’t.

I’m confident that the e-mail pioneers never in their wildest dreams thought we’d one day have state and federal legislation that prevented us from checking our e-mail (among other things) while driving!  Do we need to be told that taking our eyes of the road while hurling two tons of metal down the road at 65 miles an hour is dangerous?  Really?

Be an E-mail Support Group of One

But enough of that diatribe.  Let’s turn back to some ideas on how we can each save our self from the strangle hold this new-age form of communication has on us.  In my work with clients, we often linger on this love-hate relationship with e-mail.  On the one hand, it’s a vital, and often effective, form of communication.  On the other hand, it has created an expectation that people are always available and always responsive, a mindset that is nonsensical on its face. Yet, it persists.

So how to manage the duality that e-mail has created?  My baseline response is that we need to release ourselves from its bondage and regain command of the tool.  That’s a decision every user must make.  Once made, slight changes in the way we manage e-mail are relatively easy to implement:

• Settle on the Calendar or Tasks View.  Most productivity suites, such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Google Apps, provide a group of interrelated tools with e-mail being one of them.  There is usually also a Calendar and Tasks function in the suite, each with a separate screen or view.  Because e-mail is a form of communication, I recommend that it be treated as such.  Since very few people wait by the mailbox all day for letters and such to arrive, I believe that clicking to the Calendar or Tasks view of your productivity suite is a far better place to spend your time - looking at your appointments or to-dos.  Surely, you must check your e-mail regularly - maybe even three or four times an hour - but there’s no reason to hang out in that screen waiting with baited breath for the next one to arrive!
• Minimize The Screen.  Like settling on a different view, you can also minimize the screen altogether.  This is no different than closing your office door when meeting with someone.  The message is not to interrupt you right now because you’re working on X.  Again, you can check your e-mail as often as necessary, but you don’t have to open each and every one the minute it arrives.
• Turn Away From Your Screen.  Positioning your computer screen such that you can turn away from it when you are working on other things - like paperwork - is a terrific way to reduce the distraction caused by new e-mails dropping into your Inbox.  Of course, I don’t need to tell you about turning off the new e-mail alert, right?  But, then again, we did need that legislation…
• Turn Off Your Monitor.  If all else fails, take matters literally into your own hands and turn the monitor off!  Besides, this is the greenest suggestion of the bunch as it uses less electricity.

Take Charge of Your E-mail; Set Yourself Free

When you decide that you control your e-mail instead of being controlled by it, you free yourself of its grip on your psyche.  After you’ve taken that first step, you can implement any of the suggestions above to realize an immediate benefit from your choice.

Think I’ll go check my e-mail …

Tweet This Post

I’m not that old.  I grew up with microwaves and color television.  When I started working full time, we had fax machines, overnight mail services and voicemail was gaining acceptance.  However, as the world began to move faster and faster via technological advances like e-mail, the Internet and smartphones, our workflow processing behaviors took a turn for the worse.

The Way it Was and What’s Gone Wrong

You see, “back in the day” we started our days by looking at what had to get done … first. Then we started doing.  Today, it’s the opposite.  We jump to the doing - replying to e-mail and driving ahead - before considering what’s already on our plates. 

The purpose of these old-school review periods was to organize and prioritize our tasks, folding into the mix our appointments and other things that needed our attention.  Then we would move forward into the day and deal with what came our way.  This surveying behavior was usually repeated around the lunch hour and just before going home.  Functionally, we were keeping an eye on the big picture while dealing with the day-to-day details of our work.

This surveying process has largely been lost in today’s frenetic working world.  We’ve become addicted to “right now” - checking our e-mail on our smartphone and constantly seeking updates on various things via the Internet.  Most people have reviewed the latest e-mails that arrived overnight, often making commitments in response to them, before even reviewing what’s already on today’s to-do list!  This mindset - needing to stay Über-connected and ultra-”responsive” - is dramatically affecting our productivity, as well as our piece of mind.

Retake Command of Your World

This is a subject deserving of much more than a mere missive on corrective action.  Alas, I fear no one would read it due to the lack of perceived available time!  Consequently, I’ll keep my directive short:

Review What’s On Your Plate Three Times Each Day - Morning, Noon and Night

This is just common sense, but it’s not generally followed very much anymore.  All I’m suggesting is that people review the commitments they’ve already made before jumping in to the next batch of requests (e-mail, voice mails, meetings, etc.).  The more you know about your existing level of commitment, the better-able you’ll be to accurately judge and manage new commitments.  Moreover, when you start with “What’s on my plate?” you are taking command of your world.  When you’re waiting with baited breath of the next e-mail to land in your Inbox, you’re at the mercy of others.  It’s neither productive, nor enjoyable.

Just take a few minutes first thing in the morning, at mid-day, and just before going home to conduct a complete survey of everything on your desk or in your Inbox.  Consider what, if anything, needs to be re-prioritized and feel good about the things you’ve checked off the list.  In the end, you’ll see that this old-school behavior still drives terrific results in this modern-day world.

Tweet This Post

This is a short segment of a presentation I recently delivered on how to improve your e-mail productivity. The topics covered include:

• Turning off your new e-mail alerts.
• Batch processing your e-mail.
• Subject line naming conventions.
• One subject per e-mail.
• Reducing the use of Reply All.
• Drag & Drop functionality.

I hope you find something useful  - Watch on!

Tweet This Post

Whether you work in an office, at home or on the road, it’s often difficult to get what needs doing done.  That’s because we are all bombarded by interruptions and distractions - self-imposed and from without - no matter where we try to work.  Interruptions and distractions chip away at our focus and it’s focus that best facilitates productivity - accomplishment - success.

Wonderful Rhetoric, But Get To The Tips

Most of the productivity saboteurs you endure each day can be reduced or eliminated.  It’s just a matter of taking charge of your working environment and making the changes required to increase your “quiet.”  Here’s a list of five that will get you started.

1.  Point Away from the Door.

Most people set up their offices (or even temporary workspaces on the road) facing “out” into the fray of activity passing by them.  Specifically, most office chairs are positioned such that they face the doorway.  The same is true for mobile workers - they point themselves outward into the crowd at the airport or hotel lobby. 

The human eye is disposed to catching motion.  Thus, whenever someone (or something) passes by, we look up.  That causes a slight hiccup in our focus and diverts our attention away from what we were thinking about.  It may only be a second or two of distraction, but added up over the course of the day, minutes of productivity are lost.  And minutes lost each day add up to hours of lost productivity each year.  (This analysis doesn’t even consider the lost productivity that results when you catch someone’s eye as they pass by and they come into your workspace and start talking to you!)

The solution is to arrange your office so that you don’t directly face the door.  Start by turning your desk 90 degrees - from the standard arrangement - and push it up against the wall.  Now, one of your shoulders will face the door.  (For best results, put the desk against the “far” wall such that the door is slightly off and behind the closest shoulder.)  The result is you will no longer be interrupted by passersby and you will remain focused on the work at hand.  Moreover, others will see you’re working and tend to respect that effort, reducing the number of drive-by interruptions you suffer.

2.  Create a Designated Workspace

With the desk properly oriented, let’s address the most important part of it - the part right in front of you - the desktop.  Most people crowd their desktops with papers, personal effects, computer monitors, etc.  The result is a cramped, interruption-littered workspace, all of which is self-imposed!

The most effective workspace is the quietest.  Getting there in the physical world means clearing the roaring clutter that infringes on your focus while working.  Creating a space in your office - preferably on your desktop - where only work is done is a terrific way to achieve the type of quiet you need to be highly productive. 

To experience what I’m talking about, move everything off your entire desktop - the whole desktop.  Put it behind you or on the floor in front of the desk.  Now, sit back and look at it.  Is it screaming at your psyche?  Do you feel pulled in different directions?  No, there’s nothing interfering with your attention - the attention you are currently training on your desktop.

Once you’re convinced this is a better way to maintain your desk, find a place to put all those things that used to reside there.  My guess is many of them will leave your office or find a home on the periphery, where they belonged all along!

3.  Turn Off the Beeps, Buzzes, Pings, and Rings.

Modern technology has literally made the world smaller and closer.  We can communicate with anyone, anywhere, in real-time right from the palm of our hands.  Of course, with this ability has come attendant expectations.  Many people now believe that because we can reach each other 24×7, that we should or should be able to do so.  The result is cell phones ringing in movie theaters, e-mails pinging during meetings, and BlackBerrys vibrating across dinner tables.  A cacophony of discordant sound populate our days.

The primary way to improve this situation is by taking command of your technological tools.  Stated succinctly - TURN OFF THE BEEPS, BUZZES, PINGS, AND RINGS - at least periodically.  We need to be alerted to people communicating with us, just not every minute of every day.  The interruptions and distractions they cause is annihilating our productivity. 

By taking command of when the alerts sound, you take command of how quiet your workspace is.  Turn them off when you need to focus on a particular project.  Turn them back on when you’re finished. It’s literally that easy.

4.  Do One Thing at a Time.

Now that we’re facing the right way, cleared a place to work on, and turned off our electronic alerts, we’re ready to get to work.  That’s where this next, and maybe most important, tip comes into play.

Whether you ascribe to results from scientific study or general common sense, the idea that we multi-task well has pretty well been debunked in the last 12 months.  The only thing ”multi-tasking” seems to accomplish is increased stress, because attempts to work that way clearly reduce productivity.  The solution is to single-task - do just one thing at a time.

Prepping your environment greatly enhances the ability to focus on one thing at a time.  The best way to leverage the ”quieted” workspace is to grab a single file or project and place it in your designated work area. (If you’re working on the computer, this is accomplished by using full-sized screens.)  Then work on it until you come to a natural stopping point.  You’ll find that working this way greatly reduces the amount of time it takes to accomplish tasks.  Not only will you get things done more quickly, you’ll feel doubly good about doing so!

5.  Police Your Area When Finished.

We’ve all seen the workspace that was recently visited by a hurricane.  Invariably, the resident claims to know where everything is and he/she probably does … within a few feet or so.  Think of the lost productivity just searching!

But that’s not the only place where clutter reduces productivity.  Anytime left over materials from tasks previously completed linger in your workplace, future productivity risks being adversely affected.  The big piles and stacks are merely extreme examples of this loss.  Remember, time is irrevocably lost every second it takes to dig around for something that’s “right here.”  Searching for papers or e-mails or whatever is never time well-spent.

One of the easiest ways to permanently eliminate this inefficiency is to organize and remove task/project materials for your workspace when the task/project is done.  Yes, it’s administrative (versus productive), but it results in multiples of increased productivity downstream.  Moreover, you’ve spent some time and energy getting your workspace as productive as possible through implementing these points. Why let avoiding a little administrative effort minimize the value of that effort?

Simple Steps, Big Gains

The best way to improve your productivity is by making small changes that require little effort.  To that end, give one of the above suggestions a try.  If it works for you, great!  If not, but you like the idea behind it, try adapting it to the way you like to work.  And if you can’t adopt or adapt that suggestion, throw it out and try one of the other ones.  Every step you take in reducing the interruptions and distractions that bombard you each day is a step towards increasing your productivity and sense of command and control over your workload.

Good luck!

Tweet This Post